Earlier, the previous US president, Donald Trump, criticized Biden on his Afghanistan policy, as the former wondered out loud whether anyone in the US had begun to miss him in the White House as the Taliban advances in the Central Asian country following the US military’s exit.
Former US President Donald Trump issued a statement on Saturday lambasting the policies of the current administration under President Joe Biden on Afghanistan and remarking that Biden should have followed Trump’s “plan”.
While Trump did not elaborate on what his “plan” actually was, he did suggest that it had “protected our people and our property, and ensured the Taliban* would never dream of taking our embassy or providing a base for new attacks against America”.
“The withdrawal would be guided by facts on the ground”, Trump said, adding: “After I took out ISIS*, I established a credible deterrent. That deterrent is now gone. The Taliban no longer has fear or respect for America, or America’s power”.
Trump also predicted that it would be a “disgrace” when the Taliban “raises their flag over America’s Embassy in Kabul”.
“This is complete failure through weakness, incompetence, and total strategic incoherence”, Trump continued.
The former president’s comments came shortly after Biden took a shot at Trump’s Afghan policies earlier in the day, where he announced an increase in the troop deployment in Afghanistan to 5,000 to aid with the evacuation. According to Biden, his predecessor “left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001”, imposing a May 2021 deadline on US forces.
“When I became president, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict”, Biden noted, pledging not to pass a war in Afghanistan onto the next US president.
As his presidential term ended in 2020, Trump made a deal with the Taliban to pledge that the US, along with its allies, would reduce troops in the region and lift sanctions against the group, while the militant movement would promise to not allow al-Qaeda* or any other extremist groups to operate in regions under its control.
Trump is not the only one to condemn the 46th president for his moves in Afghanistan, as he has been joined by a choir of conservatives, with some voicing concerns that the Biden policy to withdraw American troops may result in “ISIS 3.0”.
